Microsoft Live

I am testing Microsoft Live, Redmond’s answer to Google’s Internet domination. Microsoft Live offers a search engine, picture folder, blog hosting, Map editor and a convenient WYSIWYG text editor that allows you to edit blog posts offline, and separate from the clunky Blogger editor. The editor reads your blog’s style, so you will really know what the post looks like before you submit it. Microsoft Live is also the reply to many online favourites, such as Flickr and Myspace. Users will be able to place their blog, pictures, files, maps and other assorted information in one single space. Live is also part of a strategy to attack other Google tools, such as Google Desktop and other desktop integration programs.

This seems to me to confirm Microsoft’s reputation as a catch-up company. Others will make the real trailblazing and innovation, and then Microsoft will descend with its possibility to generate a market lock-in by implementing their new features into Windows.